The Rainbow Never Ends

prompted a consideration of how L. Frank Baum’s fourteen-book Oz series actually came to a close. In fact, the series ended before it was finished; or, rather, it enjoyed multiple resurrections, effected by a wave of Baum’s magic wand. The first ending came in the sixth installment, “The Emerald City of Oz.” Dorothy, wanting to help Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, who have fallen into debt after the storm that destroyed their farm in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” convinces Princess Ozma to whisk the whole family over the rainbow; meanwhile, the evil Nomes plot an invasion of Oz. The good guys triumph, but Dorothy, Ozma, and Glinda agree that, in order to protect Oz from future threats, they must become isolationists. Glinda makes Oz invisible, so that it will be “impossible for any one ever to communicate with us in any way, after this. Then we may live peacefully and contentedly.”

Baum included a postscript:

The writer of these Oz stories has received a little note from Princess Dorothy of Oz which, for a time, has made him feel rather disconcerted. The note was written on a broad, white feather from a stork’s wing, and it said:

“YOU WILL NEVER HEAR ANYTHING MORE ABOUT OZ, BECAUSE WE ARE NOW CUT OFF FOREVER FROM ALL THE REST OF THE WORLD. BUT TOTO AND I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU AND ALL THE OTHER CHILDREN WHO LOVE US.

“DOROTHY GALE.”

This seemed to me too bad, at first, for Oz is a very interesting fairyland. Still, we have no right to feel grieved, for we have had enough of the history of the Land of Oz to fill six story books, and from its quaint people and their strange adventures we have been able to learn many useful and amusing things.

So good luck to little Dorothy and her companions. May they live long in their invisible country and be very happy!

This was in 1910. In 1911, Baum declared bankruptcy (see Katherine L. Rogers’s biography), and his continuing financial difficulties prompted him to return to his most successful franchise, with “The Patchwork Girl of Oz,” published in 1913. Of course, having rendered Oz inaccessible in the previous book, Baum was in a pickle.

I know what you’re thinking: with a little forethought, pickles can be avoided. But geniuses (or wizards, as the case may be) don’t need forethought; they just need whatever’s at hand. Baum cast about and found … wireless telegraphy. He has received, he writes in the prologue, many letters from children imploring him (“the Historian”) to get in touch with Dorothy and ask for more stories. One child suggests he try sending a telegraph:

That seemed a good idea; so the Historian rigged up a high tower in his back yard, and took lessons in wireless telegraphy until he understood it, and then began to call “Princess Dorothy of Oz” by sending messages into the air.

Lo and behold, the device worked, and Oz once again shimmered into view. Seven more full-length books followed, plus a set of short stories for young children, though, as John Updike wrote in the magazine in 2000, these later offerings seem written by “a writer who only dimly understands his own masterpiece.” Baum’s final Oz book, “Glinda of Oz,” was published in 1920, the year after he died, but the series lives on, and not just in the work of Gregory Maguire—check out this list of published Oz apocrypha, hundreds of titles strong.

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